A really great feature that is included with Windows is the ability to change the input language of the keyboard with the language bar.  You will be able to choose the input language in the little used language bar that is pinned to the taskbar.

Step 1. Access Regional and Language Options

Open up the control panel and Click on “Change keyboard or other input methods”.  Or you can type Regional and language Options in the Vista instant search bar.

Click on the “Change Keyboards…” button.

Step 2. Select and add new keyboard inputs

Click on the “Add” button and then select the language input that you would like to add.  I selected Japanese and Japanese Microsoft IME.

http://www.nasaimages.org

Together with the Internet Archive, NASA has posted 50 years of Photos, audio and other Images of its space program.  I looked through it and these pictures are amazing.  Its really wonderful that people can see these great and historic images.  Here is an explanation from the site about the project.

“NASA Images is a service of Internet Archive ( www.archive.org ), a non-profit library, to offer public access to NASA’s images, videos and audio collections. NASA Images is constantly growing with the addition of current media from NASA as well as newly digitized media from the archives of the NASA Centers.

The goal of NASA Images is to increase our understanding of the earth, our solar system and the universe beyond in order to benefit humanity.

Support NASA Images
NASA and Internet Archive entered into a Space Act Agreement in 2007 to create this service, but the Internet Archive receives no financial support from NASA. The project is currently funded through a grant from the Kahle-Austin Foundation. We are actively looking for additional financial support in the form of grants and sponsorships. If your organization would like to support this important project, we want to hear from you. Please contact us at info@nasaimages.org . “

Microsoft released the results of their Mojave Experiment today.  Microsoft rounded up 120 non-users of Vista who had a negative view of Windows Vista.  They were given a 10 minuet demonstration of the newest Microsoft Operating System “Mojave”.  Mojave reception was very positive and after the demonstration many of the respondents were surprised that this new OS was actually Windows Vista.

This is a more aggressive break from Microsoft’s normal marketing practices (which generally include creating a new logo for the packaging).  An interesting aspect of the methodology is that each 10 minuet demo was tailored to the interests of the individual.  For example, if someone was concerned about security and Viruses the demo was geared more towards items such as IE 7 Phishing filter and bit-locker drive encryption rather than stuff like media center and desktop gadgets.  According to the Official Vista Blog this was not part of the Microsoft’s new $300 million advertising campaign for Vista.

Microsoft is getting some criticism from this experiment.  Blog Headlines Read “Microsoft tricks users into liking Vista”.  However that kind of analysis misses the point.  Mojave reveals a lot of the Groupthink surrounding Vista.  Millions of people have computers that run Vista and their experiences are generally positive.  I’ve been running Vista since the day it was released and I like it.  It’s not to say that there weren’t issues with its release.  I had software which didn’t work with Vista and was never made compatible with Vista (incredibly irritating considering the software was published by Microsoft).  People did have problems with Vista just as people had problems with XP when it came out and their pain shouldn’t be ignored.   I’m stuck with a bad Intel graphics driver for Vista that always crashes and gives me a back screen for a split second while it recovers.  It’s annoying but it’s not driving me to back to XP.  Vista has been out for over a year and a half and most of the issues at launch have been fixed (well not my issue but that’s not the point).  Mark Twain once famously said “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”  On the same note, the bad things said about Vista have also been exaggerated.

New Search engines are created all the time and generally they don’t generate a lot of headlines.  Most new search engines are resigned to the fact that they won’t be able to compete with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.  They target small niches.  Not the case with Cuil because its challenging the reigning champion, Google.

The minimalist layout of the Homepage resembles Google very much.  In fact it was created by some former employees of Google.  Cuil boasts over 120,000,000,000 indexed pages and that it indexed them better than Google.  Although that claim was challenged by Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch.  It also takes aim at some of Google’s perceived shortcomings.  For instance Privacy.  It has a very visible link to its privacy policy and, unlike Google, it does not keep logs of users search activities (something that will please some privacy conscious people who worry that Google knows too much).  Cuil’s black background also seems to allude to the idea that if Google changed its background color to black it would lower worldwide power usage.  An idea that Google looked into but dismissed.

Cuil promises a lot, but the big question is whether it will succeed or if it was just hype.  Cuil is doing the same things the Google is doing and that Yahoo is doing and Microsoft is doing with their live search.  Search is incredible competitive, and Cuil doesn’t seem to do things any differently.  Other search sites like Mahalo or Technorati strive to be different, but Cuil seems to just try and replicate Google’s success.

Links

Ars Technica

Cnet

Tech Crunch

I came across this page on Microsoft’s site.  This is apparently an attempt by Microsoft to change the publics perception of Windows Vista by touting what Vista can do.  I’ll be fair and mention that they don’t claim that only Vista can accomplish these 10 things.  XP can too and here’s how.

1. Instant search

You don’t need to remember folder names to be organized anymore. Save time by instantly tracking down any document, photo, e-mail message, song, video, file, or program on your PC using Instant Search.
Just open the Start menu and begin typing in the Instant Search box—Windows Vista searches file names, application names, the full text of all files, and metadata, and then displays the results right away.

I love the Instant search in Vista.  It brings a massive boost in productivity.  You no longer need to run windows explorer to open up a file, push the windows key and type in the first few letters and its right there.  It will ever pull up and run applications.  XP user can get that search feature by downloading Google desktop.  Google Desktop will also include a web search page in the results (I mean they are Google aren’t they) but Google Desktop is not as good at running applications as Vista’s Instant Search.

2. Flip 3D

Have you lost track of what files and programs you’ve opened? Flip through all your open files and windows with a simple click of your mouse using Windows Flip 3D^A—you’re just one click away from everything you’re working on.

My opinion, Flip 3D is the most useless feature added to Vista.  Flip 3D was something that looks cool and it was probably created to impress journalist at trade shows.  But it is not something that most people use all the time.  ALT+TAB does essentially the same thing, its easier and quicker, and I still use it all the time.

3. Windows Photo Gallery

Is your collection of digital photos getting out of hand? You don’t have to search through folders to track down the ones you want. Now you can tag your photos with a date, keyword, rating, or any label you choose so you can find them quickly and easily in Windows Photo Gallery.

You can also use Photo Gallery to fix and edit photos, and then share them with family and friends through slideshows, e-mail, or prints—so everything you need for photos is in one place.

Windows Live Photo Gallery can brings all the functionality of Vista’s photo gallery to XP.  It’s arguably just as good if not better than the photo gallery that ships with Vista.  Allows you to do basic editing and even export photos to flickr.

4. Windows Movie Maker

Making a great home movie just got easier. Use Windows Movie Maker to blend videos and photos into a rich movie, complete with your own soundtrack, titles, and credits.

When your masterpiece is ready to share with family and friends, you can easily create a professional-looking DVD in Windows DVD Maker.^U

Windows Movie Maker comes bundled with Windows XP, and it is just a lousy on XP as it is on Vista.

5. Windows Media Player 11

The larger your collection of digital music grows, the harder it can be to organize and keep track of it. But now you can easily scroll, flip, browse through, and play your entire music library in Windows Media Player 11. You can even create new playlists of your favorite tracks with a single click.

You can keep your music moving with you by easily synchronizing your portable music device. Or you can share the contents of your entire library with other computers on your home network or with digital media devices such as Xbox 360.

Windows Media Player 11 is another program that ships with Vista that can also be downloaded for XP.  You can download it here.

6. Internet Explorer 7

Do you like to jump from website to website? Satisfy your appetite for multitasking without having to open several browser windows. You can open multiple webpages in one window and easily click between them with the tabbed browsing feature in Windows Internet Explorer 7—plus, you can see thumbnail images of all your open webpages at a glance with Quick Tabs.

Not only is IE 7 available for Windows XP, Microsoft practically shoves it down the users throats via Windows update.  But it is a significant security improvement over IE6.  If your running XP and don’t have IE 7 download it here.

7. Windows Media Center

Watch TV on your own schedule—not the TV networks’ schedule. If your PC has a TV tuner, you can record, watch, and pause live television on your desktop or mobile PC using Windows Media Center.^M

With multiple TV tuners, you can even record one channel while watching another. When and where you watch your shows is now up to you.

The first Media Center was bundled with Windows XP Media Center edition.  The Media Center for XP is essentially the same as the one for Vista.  Furthermore Media Center really requires extra hardware such as a TV tuner to be really useful.  That means it will never be used on a majority of Vista machines.

8. Media Center Extenders

Tired of huddling around the PC for entertainment? Connect your PC to one or more televisions in your home using a Windows Media Center^M Extender like Xbox 360, and enjoy all your digital entertainment on the big screen—from photo slideshows, home videos, and digital music to live and recorded TV shows and movies.

See #7 Above.

9. Sidebar and Widgets

No need to open a web browser to check traffic and weather, open a calculator to add up a few numbers and open an application to see your calendar. Now you can put mini-applications called gadgets right on your desktop, where you can see and use them whenever the mood strikes. Just use the Windows Sidebar pane to store and organize your favorite gadgets.

Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly on Widgets(I mean gadgets).  Yahoo Widgets has a good variety of Widgets for Windows XP, and Google Desktop has a Vista like sidebar.

10. Parental Controls

Worried about your kids’ computer use or about what they may encounter online? Now you can give your kids a safer experience and set PC usage boundaries for them by using the centralized Parental Controls in Windows Vista. You can even restrict games and websites based on your family’s values.

Plus, you can better protect your PC and your personal information, as well as your family, with built-in security tools like Windows Defender and anti-spam and phishing filters.

Again another case where Vista ports its new features down to prior versions of Windows.  Windows Live Family Safety is a Windows Live program that brings Parental Controls to XP.  Windows defender is also available for XP

What they left out

I’m quite surprised that Microsoft showcased stuff like Movie Maker (which is a pretty crummy program, although free), but it leaves out one of the biggest improvements Vista has over XP, Improved Security.  As much as UAC (User Account Control) is reviled among Vista’s critics, UAC has made running Vista significantly safer.  Vista Business and Ultimate come with Bitlocker Drive encryption which will protect your data if your computer is lost or stolen.  Vista also allows the enabling of DEP (Data Execution Prevention) which protects against buffer overruns that could install malware on your computer (DEP is also available from XP SP2 and later).

I recently installed Adobe Photoshop Elements on to my computer to assist with things like graphics and screenshots for my site.  However along with Photoshop, Adobe also downloaded a little program called Adobe Photo Downloader.  Its a relatively harmless bit of software meant to assist  with downloading photos from a digital camera.  Still its something I don’t use and I don’t want programs I don’t use to be running in the background and taking up resources.

I’m going to show how to disable the startup programs using Windows Defender.  Previously with Windows XP you would do this by running a utility in windows called msconfig.exe (msconfig is still present in Vista and you can run it by typing “msconfig” in search bar built into your start menu)

Step 1. Open up Windows Defender

You can find Windows Defender by opening the control panel and clink on “Security”.  Windows Defender is one of the options in the next screen.  Or you could simply type in “Defender” or “Windows Defender” in Vista’s start menu search.

Step 2. Open up Software Explorer

Windows Defenders main purpose is an Antispyware program so this screen is mostly related to that.  Click on “tools”.

Select “Software Explorer”.  From here you will be able to manage the startup programs.

Step 3. Show for all users

If you are running as an limited user you will not be able to make any changes to the startup programs.  So in order to disable startup programs you will need to push the “Show for all users” button.  This will trigger a UAC prompt.  This will also apply the setting to all other accounts.  Often you will need to push the button as an administrator (because as we all know running as an admin on Vista is not really running as an admin).

Step 4. Disable Programs

Go down the list and disable all the programs you don’t want to run at startup.  Be sure that “Startup Programs” is the selected category.

The first time I ran Microsoft Office 2007 I experienced somewhat of a shock.  “Where the heck was everything”.  While innovative; the ribbon menu of Office 2007 was a dramatic change from the menu system of prior versions of Office.  I suddenly have to relearn how to do simple things such as print the document.  I really missed the icons on the toolbar that allowed me to do common tasks with the click of a mouse.  You can do this in Office 2007, but you will need to do some configuration.  The steps I’m showing are for Word 2007 but Excel and PowerPoint have similar steps.

Step 1. Open Word Options

First you need to click on the “Microsoft Office Button” (The Microsoft Office logo that is actually a button) and select “Word Options”.  Because it is detached from the rest of the menu, many users overlook the Word Options button.  However Word Options is very useful.

Step 2.  Choose Customize

The next step is rather easy you simply choose Customize in the menu.  From this menu you can access many useful settings for office.  For example, If you choose Save in the menu you can change the default format to save files from docx to Word 97-2003 files.  If you select Proofing you can change the settings for the Spelling and Grammar Checker.

Step 3. Customize you Quick Access Toolbar

You can select items from among the various commands and add them to your Quick Access Toolbar using the Add button.  You can add <Separator>(s) for organization and printing is once again a mouse click away.

Most users will never reinstall Windows on their computer.  The Internet is awash with programs such as registry cleanup tools and utilities that tune up the performance of the PC.  Some of them work better than others (or not at all), but all have the same goal.  To keep the PC running smoothly as long as possible.

However there are several scenarios where there are real benefits to reinstall your operating system.

1.) Your PC is experiencing major software problems and you need to go back to the factory settings to fix them.

2.) Your PC has been infected by spyware, adware, or any other form of malicious critters.

3.) Your PC is getting older and the OS isn’t running like it used to.  You can reinstall the OS to get it back to its original performance.

4.)You have just bought a new PC.  Excited; you take it out of the box, plug it in, and boot it up for the first time.

XP is several years old and out of the box its not quite ready to go out in the world.  So I’m including my tips for getting it ready.  All the software that I am recommending is free.  Although some of it may require that you have a legitimate non-pirated version of Windows.  I am making that assumption, and I assume there are workarounds for those not using legitimate copies of windows.  But I’m not covering those here.  People will also notice that I am not including an Office suite even though its an important thing to install on your system.  However because I want to recommend free stuff that I use personally (and I don’t use openoffice.org) but rather an expensive bit of software produced by the same company that makes Windows.

Installing Windows XP, Brings back memories of 2001

Important – Install all updates

After you finish your installation, this is the single most important step in making your version of windows ready to survive out in the wild.  Its pretty well known that unpatched Windows are easily infected by malware unless you run all the security updates.  The first thing you do after the installation is to run Windows update and get the most current updates.  Be prepared this will take a long time, but it is very much worth it.

If you want to speed up this step here are some links to the XPSP2 and SP3 download.  You can download them on another computer while you are installing windows and move them on to the new computer with a 1 or 2 GB usb flash drive.

XP Service Pack 2

XP Service Pack 3

Take out the trash

After the 100+ updates to get the machine current, The most annoying thing about reinstalling your OS is all the trialware, useless utilities, and desktop Icons that come pre-installed on your system.  Use The PC Decrapifier to get rid of a lot of that junk.

http://pcdecrapifier.com/

Web Surfing changed since 01

Windows XP generally comes with Internet Explorer 6, which does not have a very good security track record.  So the next step is to replace it with one that is more capable.  When installing all the updates you will be asked if you want to install the new version of Internet Explorer IE7.  Download it, it is much better.  If you didn’t get it on windows update you can get it here.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ie/getitnow.mspx

In addition to IE7 I recommend that you also get the latest version of Mozilla Firefox.  Firefox is very customizable and is widely supported on the net.  Its always good to have a second browser.

http://getfirefox.com

Security Software

The next thing you are going to need is anti-virus and anti-spyware software.  Microsoft’s Windows Defender is a decent anti-spyware and it integrates with Windows Security Center (which comes with SP2) very well.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx

AVG is a good free anti-virus.  There is also a commercial version and Grisoft tries really hard to get users to download the pay version, but there is a link for the free version.

http://free.avg.com/

Other stuff to download

Lastly you should get the most recent version of some of the webs most common applications.

Newest version of Windows Media Player

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.mspx

Adobe Flash Player

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/

Adobe Reader

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

(Originally Posted May 9, 2008)

Nobody writes perfect software and programs are constantly being updated an patched to fix security vulnerabilities.  One of the most essential ways to harden you computer against attacks such as malware is to make sure that the software on your computer is up to date.  All modern operating systems offer mechanisms for updating themselves.  Windows uses Windows Updated to automatically search for new updates and install them.  Due to the explosion of spyware, virus, trojans, and all kinds of malicious junk it is very important to stay current with all the critical security patches.

While Windows Update does a decent job patching your operating system, windows is not the only software that needs to be patched.  While third party programs such as iTunes and Adobe reader have their own update program, Other software from Microsoft, such as Microsoft Office, can use Windows Update.  Except you have to change Windows Update to Microsoft Update.

Step by Step Installation of Microsoft Update

The first step to turning on Microsoft update is to run the windows update tool.  I did this by selecting Windows Update from the Start menu.  If it is not on your start menu you can also find it by selecting “Run” from the start menu and typing in “wupdmgr.exe”.

Once you have Windows Update open, click on the “Upgrade to Microsoft Update…” link on the right hand side of the page.

Next hit the “Start Now” button, pretty self explanatory.

In the next step, you are instructed to read the license agreement.  Once again you can just click the button and proceed.

At this point you may be prompted to install the ActiveX Control to run Microsoft Update.  Click on the yellow bar at the top of the page and select “Install ActiveX Control”.

From there the only thing left to do is to push the “Install” button to confirm the installation of Microsoft Update.

Congratulations you are done.  Also, make sure that Automatic Updates is set to on so that you get updates as they come out.